Dances With Death
by Ashen Triskel
Summary: Reincarnated! "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup." "None can understand the machinations of the drow." What if they meddle with each others' machinations? Let's find out...
1. Prologue

_Dances with Death_

Prologue

As first hunts went, this one was shaping up to be a humiliating goose-chase, Tjaren thought, wondering if he would be dismissed from the Bloodhounds if he requested reassignment. Probably. He sighed and shoved a clump of tangled hair off of his sweaty brow, ignoring the growling of his stomach as he surveyed the inscrutable forest surrounding him. Tjaren Gylesen, one-hunt wonder, he thought, then groaned. He would never live it down.

"How long will you hide?" he growled at the faceless wood. His voice fell into the watchful stillness that permeated the emerald twilight like a stone, and he strained to hear something beyond the sounds of smaller creatures fleeing in the wake of his intrusion, flutters and rustlings that fell all too soon into the comparative hush of the northern forest.

A breeze lifted his hair as he sighed, surrounded by an empty stretch of forest waving mocking green flags of truce as far as his human eyes could see. "How much longer am I going to have to chase you, irritating little sneak?" he grumbled. His gaze made another fruitless circuit of his surroundings, his vision more hampered than helped by the occasional shafts of late sun piercing the dimness beneath the forest's thick boughs.

Another sigh ruffled the leaves over his head, and Tjaren lifted his head in anticipation of the cool breeze against his hot-glowing face. Not a breath of wind reached him though, and instinct had him ready sword and crossbow before his conscious mind truly grasped the strangeness of that. That lagging part of his awareness caught up when words followed the sigh. "How much longer will I have to ignore you before you get tired and go home, you clodhopping farmer's boy?"

Tjaren glared over his sword's guard at the woman lying belly-down on the branch above his head, her feet kicking lazily in the air, and fired. Even as his finger squeezed the trigger, she slid sideways to hide behind the hefty limb, the barbed shaft from his sturdy crossbow biting deeply into the bark where she had been.

Not bothering to reload, Tjaren let the crossbow drop to hang on its strap and charged, aiming a wicked poke at the tree-bound female as he drew even with her. She hoisted herself back onto the branch and put it between herself and the human once more, pulling herself higher into the tree as he cursed his nimble opponent and swung again at her retreating legs.

His quarry eyed the gash in the branch he'd made. "Did I not merit the customary "or alive", then, or are you trying to compensate for inexperience with enthusiasm?"

Her continuing conversational tone despite having been chased into a tree at swordpoint caused the young bounty hunter to shake his head in disbelief. To his surprise and hers, he found himself answering, "My employer doesn't give half a rat's ass about you, girl. He wants that idol you stole. Hand it over, and you'll be rid of me." _And I can go home and have a good meal and a hot bath, _he added silently.

She snorted and pulled herself another branch higher, putting another layer of cover between herself and that crossbow and settling with her back against the trunk. "That's rich, coming from the man who bought it from a pair of thieves in the first place. Even if it were a legitimate sale, he has no right to it if he's so ill-educated as to call it an idol." She said this posed as if about to take a nap, head tipped back and eyes closed. Her eyes opened as a thought struck her, and she raised her head. "And if you must call me anything, it will be 'Kael', not 'girl', as I'm old enough to be your ancestor."

Tjaren didn't know it was a mark of disdain that Kael didn't bother to give him her full name, and was in fact amused at her claim of advanced age. He also didn't know that she was exaggerating her age, for that matter, as she was a mere ninety seven years old. "Of course you are," he replied, humoring her. "What is that thing, if it's not an idol?"

His voice was too loud, and Kael's keen ears caught the rattle of wood on wood beneath it as he quietly reloaded his crossbow. She slit her eyes open, watching the hunter furtively as he aimed. "It's nothing you'd understand, boy. The explanation was wasted on you, in any case. It's a thing of magic even older than your sorry tricks."

Kael dropped from her perch, guiding her fall between the branches and hitting the ground at a roll that ended more abruptly that she'd planned. A quick glance up gave her Tjaren's stunned face _(not bad, for a fumble-footed human)_, his crossbow still pointed upwards, fortunately for Kael. She grinned, giving him time to get a full view of her slit-pupiled eyes and pointed teeth before she regained her feet and fled, the belated whirr of a crossbow bolt confirming her opinion that he was rather slow to recover from shock, for all that he was rather light on his feet.

_Gods love him, he thought I was human__, _she chuckled to herself as she ran, pack thudding against her back. Her heart lightened with every impact, each a reminder of the onyx and white jade statue of a lovely elven woman- the last of the stolen hoard of Morzadavien'mgo of Raszkethemiorl, who was murdered by dragon hunters. A grin broke out over her face, in part due to the tremendous crash announcing that Tjaren had tripped over a nasty knot of roots and underbrush she had leaped not long ago. The rest was pure anticipation; her task was almost complete. Soon, she could return home!

Ahead of her loomed a hulking, moss-covered tree, so ancient as to seem carved from stone. Its base stood apart from the other trees, but its green-bearded branches reached outwards to the ancient ash's children, straining up through their elder's canopy towards the dimming light. To Kael, its imposing height and girth formed a living ladder and upper floor to the forest. Pulling two short daggers, she scaled the far side of the craggy trunk, pulling her booted feet out of view a moment before Tjaren stumbled into the clearing, red in the face, hair in his eyes, and swearing. Kael, well-travelled and fluent in three languages, still raised her eyebrows appreciatively at the young bounty hunter's inventive display of invective.

Kael had planned to remain hidden within the leaves to finally lose the boy, but, peering down at the hapless human struggling to his feet, a grin stretched across her shadowed face and a chuckle bubbled up to her lips. For all that the hunter had nearly wounded her thrice, Kael could not bring herself to take a mere mammal youngling seriously, and saw no reason not to have a little more fun at his expense.

The young man's gaze found her instantly, an intensity to his eyes that would have told Kael that he had grown tired of her games had she not been quaking with mirth several feet above his head. Amid her giggles, it was pure luck that the thin dagger he threw at her missed, and only that by a few scant inches. The near miss stifled her levity, and she vanished into the concealing upper branches as a shorn lock of her deep red hair fell to the ground, a poignant marker of her fourth close call with the determined young man.

"We've done this already, fay'ri," Tjaren called up to her, keeping the frustration in his voice to a minimum. "Just throw down what you stole, and I don't care where you go after that."

_Fay'ri?_ Indignation stole her voice for a moment, and only self-preservation (although she would name it a desire for an element of mystery) kept her hidden within the cradle of branches once she had regained it. "Did the cow step on your head as a child, farmboy? I look nothing like the demon-elves!" Beneath her exaggerated bluster, she congratulated herself for the resignation in the boy's voice; she had no real desire to kill the poor creature, not after she'd enjoyed the banter they'd traded over their clashes. It was better if he just gave up and never returned to the Baron. Kael hoped he had gotten half of his fee in advance, gritting her teeth as she reflected on the repulsive sight of the man's sausage-like fingers running lewdly over the treasure she carried, a sight she'd had to suffer through as she lay in wait to recapture it.

Kael belatedly realized that Tjaren said nothing for several long moments, and she snorted contemptuously, assuming he was sulking. Then she heard a flask being uncorked and decided that the odds he could uncork a flask one-handed and still attack her were low. She peeked over one of the heavy, contorted branches in time to see him walking around the tree, splashing it with a reeking, viscous liquid. Oil.

The sight amused her enough that she decided to remain standing, the better to harass the human. "You're new at this, aren't you?" she asked.

"What makes you say that?" Tjaren replied, calm once more in his confidence that he had the upper hand.

"First, there are _elves_ in this forest. Wild elves. And you're about to burn a very old tree. Second, the wood is covered in wet moss, and will burn slowly while giving off plenty of smoke that will make you easy to find. Third, I am stronger than a human- but not fay'ri- and I can get out of this tree whenever I want to and beat your pudding head against it." The last was technically true, although Kael's hide lacked the resilience that she would try such a trick against a well-armed opponent.

Tjaren paused briefly, debating whether or not to dignify her ludicrous boast with a response as he pulled out a flintstriker. He decided after a moment's consideration that answering her wouldn't compromise his newly discovered dignity and replied, "Is that why you've been running from me for a tenday? You must be awful hungry about now, without any proper meals."

The accusation of fleeing made Kael go very still within the uppermost branches of the old tree, her slit-pupiled eyes narrowing even as a detached part of her noted the rural accent that surfaced with the boy's temper. "What gives you the idea that I was running _from_ anything, farmboy?" she asked, her voice suddenly as cold as snowfall in the dead of winter.

Surprised and gratified that he had finally struck a nerve in his irritating quarry, Tjaren smirked up at her and shot back, "So you're running _towards_ a hot meal, then?"

An odd light entered Kael's silver-blue eyes, and her voice wrapped around him with all the tender sweetness of frostbite as she said, "That is entirely possible. Or, as luck would have it, it may be that a meal is blithely chasing me, unaware of my kind's tastes."

"Your kind?" the young man scoffed, covering his unease with scorn. _Did she just threaten to eat me?_

"Indeed," Kael affirmed.

_She just threatened to eat me!_

There was a moment of stillness in the forest as Tjaren glared up at her and, in a gesture of defiance, lit the oil.

The flames licked up the oil-soaked wood, and Kael climbed lower into the tree, daring Tjaren to loose another bolt at her. He didn't take her bait, confident that he would have a clearer shot once the fire forced her into the open and more respectful now of the thief's agility. The moss withered and charred under the rising heat, the bark of the ancient tree began to blacken, but Kael spared not a glance for the blooming flames beneath her, staring steadily at Tjaren.

He was still waiting for her to cringe away from the flames and run, his crossbow steadily pointed at her, just in case. His fearless ignorance irritated her, along with the fact that he hadn't even tried to ponder her dramatic allusion to her heritage. _I'll teach him to ignore me, _she promised herself, and casually let one hand drop into the rising flame. She trailed her fingers through the fire, opening the path within her and letting her power fill it, drawing it into hypnotic ripples as her fingers played the chords of a melody only she could hear.

"Elves haven't only mixed with demons, farmboy," she remarked, attempting to draw him into realization. She gave him the merest glance, reflected vermillion dancing in her pale eyes, the only movement in her serene face. Her eyebrows contracted, a brief shattering of her remote expression as she saw Tjaren's wondering face pointed at her above the business end of the crossbow he held loosely, also directed her way. He was suitably impressed, but free of any of the shock that would accompany comprehension of her hint. _Gods, he_ is _slow_.

"No guesses still, farmboy?" Kael growled, her temper breaking through the quiet euphoria of letting her power become infused with living fire, even the pale shadow of it that the boy had made here. She poured her will into the flames and they erupted into a great red, yawning maw that closed over Tjaren, surrounding him briefly before streaming past him. He'd evidently had the sense or lucky instinct to hold his breath- his voice was only a little hoarse as he dropped the cinders that were his crossbow, tried to draw his sword on her and screamed as his palm blistered.

Kael was too focused on the cavorting flame-bodied dragon to even comment. She felt it tugging at the edges of her control, threatening to sap her reserves (already low thanks to her disdain for conserving her strength when in the realms of the merely mortal), and decided to end the show, backing the human against the trunk of the tree before releasing it. Deprived of her will or any more mundane fuel, the burning apparition vanished, leaving Tjaren blinking in the sudden murk. He nearly screamed again as Kael's upside-down face materialized in front of him, her slit-pupiled eyes reflecting the dim light so as to make her look blind, intoxicated by the night, feral.

The portion of his brain not taken up with being horrified spared a thought for how ludicrous he must look, scorched and trapped by a young woman…thing hanging upside down out of a tree. It was hardly how he'd envisioned his first mission as a bounty hunter- and the inhuman thief with her dagger at his throat was hardly the frail waif the baron had described fleeing out his window three tendays past.

The thief blinked at him- an odd thing to watch upside down- and said, "What has no fear of fire, lives longer than humans, and likes to play with its food?"

Taren felt a bead of sweat trickle down his face, stinging his burned skin. He was no loremaster, but he could give one answer to that question. "You," he rasped.

Kael let loose a delighted chuckle. "Me," she said, and kissed the tip of the frightened young man's nose before flipping out of the tree and disappearing into the woods, willing the flames on the ash to darkness. Curiosity made her stop and peer back through the dusk that rendered her invisible to the hunter's eyes, watching as he trudged away from the smoking tree and slumped into a hollow in the roots of another.

_Hopefully he's considering a change in occupation,_ Kael thought, watching him flinch at his burned skin as he put his head in his hands, and turned her back to the woods, proceeding to head for the mountains. She preferred seclusion for summoning Jiriaewuthelaan.


	2. The Affairs of Dragons

Chapter One: The Affairs of Dragons

The sun, shockingly bright after the forest murk, lanced through the thin mountain air to awaken lights of garnet and crimson in Kael's short hair. She was a spot of brightness on the austere face of the mountain as she stared down from her perch on one of its many jagged spurs, watching the waving of the forest clinging to the mountain's stony feet far below. The remote mountain scene in all of its late-afternoon glory did not go unnoticed, but only served to provide Kael with a nagging reminder of the task she was currently ignoring to admire the scenery.

First, she needed to find a place with a good vantage point- her pale eyes regarded the outcropping she stood on with annoyance- like the one she was standing on, except with a greater height difference from the surrounding area. Jiriaewuthelaan was not to be taken as lightly as the humanling, young as he was. She had every intention of manipulating the grounds of their encounter to favor her, the first order of business being finding ground that favored her- Jiriae was prone to confusing size with importance, and towering over her would not discourage that propensity.

She sighed inwardly as she wrenched her focus back to the task at hand, unused to having to exercise more than perfunctory caution after twenty-some years of work retrieving the chief treasures of Morzadavien'mgo's hoard from mortals who usually had little cognizance of what they'd gotten their hands on. Kael was always more careful when dealing with her full-blooded kin. While not specifically malicious, indeed less so than some dragons living outside the pocket of reality occupied by Raszkethemiorl, they would brook no weakening of their bloodline. Therefore, Kael's heritage was just barely tolerated by some with disdainful sniffs as it was, and disdainful sniffs from the fire-breathing members of the Raszkethemiorlei were not easily dismissed. Losing face before the youngest and weakest of the Raszkethemiorlei was not the note on which she intended to begin her triumphant return.

Kael's gaze raked her surroundings with an air of purpose this time, ignoring its lonely grandeur and the ever-unanswerable siren call of the ice-blue ocean of sky vaulting above her in her search for a suitable position from which to summon the juvenile dragon. She sighed, readjusting the bag of holding slung over her shoulder with a grumble, and she sprang down from her perch. She landed carefully on the uneven ground, and began her trudge further up the mountain where a slender stream had cut a gash through the stone, her stomach grumbling in similarly bad humor as the brisk mountain wind chuckled around her ears. _Reminding me of what I don't have_, Kael thought sourly as she climbed onward, vestigial muscles in her shoulders itching to spread the wings she lacked.

Her mood cleared as she came upon the source of the stream, finding that the trail of water trickling down the mountainside collected in a bowl-like depression before spilling down as a stream. Better still, the ground rose sharply around the depression, giving her even more distance between the sunken zone and where she would place herself. She pulled a single scale from where it had curved around her ankle, glad to finally be rid of the continuous itch of magic longing to be worked while trapped between her skin and her boot. Etched into the scale was Jiriaewuthelaan's name in draconic script, glowing coyly now that the time had come for its dweomer to actually be activated. Kael gritted her teeth in annoyance: summoning spells were treacherous, more so when the entity in question had no interest in answering calls, as seemed to be the case now. Fortunately, the spell itself was already encased within the scale, a concession to Kael's rudimentary knowledge of the art of conjury. The only alteration she made to her activation of the spell was this: that she tossed the scale over the frigid pool rather than the dry ground beside it as she spoke the name etched into the emerald scale.

Her voice awoke the script containing the spell, bringing a knife-edged gleam to the letters as the spell tasted her power in search of the crystalline bite of the magic that made it. Kael made no attempt to block the seeking tendril as it squirmed through her aura, finding the soul of her magic, the formless essence of the sky that nonetheless held edges sharp enough to make the wind bleed. This was the legacy of the Raszkethemiorlei that the spell sought, and having found its invoker worthy of wielding it, it retreated in a semblance of humility (but only a semblance; it was, after all, draconic magic) to work what was commanded of it.

The crisp mountain air held for a moment the scent of salt and of foreign verdancy as the portal opened, swallowing the scale as payment and dragging the vivid green reptile who owned it through, dumping him unceremoniously in the icy mountain pool. Kael had seated herself on a slab of shale and watched from above, blinking away the droplets of water as the indignant dragon removed his ten foot long body from the water and snapped his jaws in her direction.

Little of the cold from the water had reached through his scales, Kael knew, and so was unconcerned about his irritation. A little water was hardly reason enough for him to actually bite her- as the youngest of the dragons of any color of the Raszkethemiorlei, he still couldn't afford the arrogance typical of the older dragons. Nor, for that matter, could he afford facing down Dartathleciele if she sustained an injury as severe as a dragon bite due to his temper.

"Kael'risseth arii Mornkierasalein," he greeted her, eyes flashing and voice clipped.

Kael smiled in the face of his irritation."Jiriae. I hope you're prepared for a long flight."

Avarice instantly sharpened the young dragon's gaze. "You have them?" he asked, his interest helping him to brush aside his injured dignity. Anyway, having inadvertently acknowledged Kael as the higher ranking of the pair when she refused to match his formality, the only thing left for him to do was pretend that he had not been impaled upon his own verbal sword. At least half of what decided rank among the Raszkethemiorlei was simply acting the part- and of course, he should have expected that greeting Kael formally would end in her claiming that as homage. Sardior, god of gem dragons, delighted in clever conversation, and it was an art avidly practiced by the Raszkethemiorlei.

Her expression could only be described as smug as she watched Jiriae smolder over her successfully one-upping him. "Would I summon you if I didn't?" Kael asked, enjoying their banter and the fact that she could carry on a conversation in Draconic, rather than the bland tongue that was Faerûnian Common.

"If you wished to add their safe return to Raszkethemiorl to your record of accomplishments, yes."

"I'm not in such dire straits for respect among our people, Jiriae," Kael replied. She gave a shrug and added, "Besides, I can afford to be generous, since I believe I've vastly exceeded expectations by so easily surviving a hostile world where my supposed peers reside."

Jiriaewuthelaan stared at Kael, sitting without a scratch on her for all that she had spent a two-score and a half of years in a world utterly foreign to the dragon-born girl. Her triumphant return would certainly force at least two of the five eldest to eat their words- and Kael would be on hand to cheerfully feed them every morsel of a mutter and mop their scaly jaws clean of any derisive whispers that remained— naturally, all out of a good-natured concern for their digestive health.

"Show me, then, the Seven Gems of the fallen Morzadavien'mgo's hoard, that I may bear witness to your success." _At least then he'd be there to watch the elders' dismay as Kael'risseth emanated self-satisfaction at them- politely, of course._

Kael pulled her pack from her shoulders and set it on her knees, her every motion exhibiting a flair for the dramatic that she knew would irritate Jiriaewuthelaan.

The young emerald dragon gave a snort that ruffled the short, unruly locks of her garnet hair, saying, "Don't strain yourself impressing me, sister. Save your impudence for the elders; I know you're dying to face them again."

The garnet-haired half-dragon took minimal notice of the jibe, only chuckling and saying lightly, "You have no idea." In truth she was a decade older than Jiriae and no relation to him, but by dragons' reckoning, they had practically grown up together, thus cultivating all of the sibling rivalry that that entailed.

Paradoxically enough, it also made Jiriaewuthelaan Kael's best friend; he was not yet secure enough in his draconic might to attempt to run roughshod over her pride as the others under Dartathleciele's sway did. _Although he has been trying to chip away, _Kael thought, eyeing him. _Ambitious little wyrm. _

She brushed away a sigh as she pulled the first of the seven artifacts from her pack, enjoying the awed light that sprang unbidden to Jiriae's eyes as he viewed the treasure with both his eyes and his psionics, and imagined the defenses she had to pass in order to secure such a potent work of magic and craftsmanship.

At first glance, the item in her hand was a crystal orb similar to those used by diviners, legitimate or otherwise, across the world of Toril. A closer look would draw the eye to noticing a small but definite cleft at one point in its circumference, exactly opposite a spot where the sphere extended into a more oblong shape. It was not until one noted the steady pulse of the wintry light within the crystal, coalescing in the core of it and pushing outwards to gleam in the pinpoints of its myriad facets like unnumbered, hungry eyes that its true shape snapped into view: that of a heart. It was an empty, forsaken thing, the only thing within it that hungry, pulsing light, faint in the mountain sunshine but carrying the entire hollow famine of the deep, endless winter that the ice dragons held in their fondest dreams.

Kael smirked, neatly covering the discomfort that her continued proximity with the starving, frigid crystal caused her while basking in the glow of present and future esteem. Being the scion of the lovely garnet dragon Mornkierasalein had ensured her survival as an infant, for despite the fact that it was a scaleless, soft, elven infant inside her egg, Dartathleciele hoped that she would grow to powers like her mother, a formidable dragon by all accounts. The other dragons, though none dared to say so, privately thought that he was deluding himself, although they were far less subtle in expressing this opinion to Kael. Mornkierasalein's opinion on the matter was something of a mystery; in a manner typical to the garnet line, she returned to her solitude once her hatchling had replaced her first set of teeth, about thirteen years after Kael's hatching.

"Kael'risseth?" Leaving out her lineage was the greatest concession to familiarity that Jiriae, the puffed-up emerald lizard, would make on this important task. It had the desired effect, however; it snapped Kael out of her trance.

"Jiriaewuthelaan?" she responded.

"Fabulous as the Frozen Heart is, it doesn't excuse you from showing me the other six treasures, that I may be certain of their authenticity."

"Bite your tongue, wyrmling," Kael snapped, deciding it was high time to remind Jiriaewuthelaan that she was not to be taken lightly, no matter how good of a mood she may initially be in, or how important he was trying to make himself feel.

Predictably, the dragonling's eyes flared and locked with Kael's, his own dignity unable to let such a slap in the face pass. He spread his wings, hooding them menacingly in the hope that the simple reminder of his physical advantage would cow Kael. Unimpressed, Kael's glare continued to bore into her impertinent junior- and even though Jiriaewuthelaan at his full height was taller than Kael on her perch, the wiry halfblood still somehow managed to look down her nose at the young dragon.

Disappointed but unsurprised, Jiriae broke eye contact to size up Kael, silently marveling at her. Every line of her spoke of supreme confidence in the face of her horned and armored adversary, showing complete disregard for the vulnerabilities inherent in her own slender form and tender skin. She had been bold in the face of mightier dragons than he before, Jiriae remembered, but he wondered how much bolder she may have become after years in a world where her heritage provided an innate advantage. It would be interesting to watch her progress on Raszkethemiorl, he decided, for as much as he and Kael clashed, he genuinely liked and was fascinated by the half-dragon girl.

"You will make a great dragon one day, Kael'risseth arii Mornkierasalein, if you ever gain the form to match your heart," he said, his way of acknowledging defeat.

Kael gave a wry smile at the self-serving compliment- it wasn't so bad to be defeated by a future great dragon, after all. "So, shall we proceed?" she queried. As if nothing had happened, as if she had not won another of Jiriae's occasional challenges, she withdrew the next item, her favorite of the ones she had collected, from her pack.

Simply holding the enchanted garnet, its ornate golden setting dimly lustrous in the twilight, Kael could feel its ties to the plane of Fire, could feel a promise within it similar to that imbued within Jiriae's scale. There was a difference, she knew: while the dweomer of the scale was expired, leaving it merely a shed piece of dragonhide laying wherever Jirae had been before she summoned him, the Ixen'ifni had within it the power to draw elementals from the Plane of Fire, not young, quarrelsome dragons, and its enchantment would not expire. It also had the added benefit of washing away the residual chill left by holding the Frozen Heart, which was not something Kael intended to be touching while her thoughts wandered again.

Kael's gloating manner was tempered with some reluctance as she handed this treasure over and reached for the next items in her bag, the white jade and onyx statue that she had initially broken in to steal from the baron (she had never bothered to learn his name), and a large and wickedly enchanted sword, also from Morzadavien'mgo's collection, that she was surprised to find and took, as well as several precious gems that she was keeping for herself as consolation for not returning and razing the corpulent baron's manor to the ground. She handed the sword over without any real interest, and it was accepted by Jiriaewuthelaan with the same casual manner.

The statue of the dancing woman was the true prize, for although enchantments blazed from the sword, the statue was imbued with a subtle magic, just barely within Kael's ability to sense. It was a magic that exhaled the essence of darkness: the formless dark between the stars, the shadowless night of the subterranean world, and the wonders that such darkness hid. It murmured of the unknown, waxing in strength, warping the laws of what may be in the savage underworld, revealing themselves through snags in the fabric of the world- for that was the nature of true treasures, that by virtue of their very mystery they altered the laws of possibility to suit their shape.

On the other hand, enchanted weapons were kept in hoards, to their mind, for bribing mortals with or for loaning to them while they did their bidding. That, or in the event that any of the Raszkethemiorlei felt it necessary to take on a mortal form, they would have no shortage of fearsome weapons at their disposal. It helped, or so they were told, to assuage the sense of loss at having their physical capabilities so severely curtailed. Neither Jiriae nor Kael would know, as Jiriae was as yet incapable of such a transformation, and Kael made it a point not to fall back on such a crutch- she had left Raszkethemiorl determined to triumph on her own power, and not due to the virtue of the many weapons or other items Dartathleciele had attempted to press upon her out of concern for her security. She flinched slightly at the memory; his concern was touching, she supposed, but the low opinion of her might that it implied still stung, decades later.

The sword was followed by a series of four skulls, reportedly possessed of remarkable wisdom, but while Kael had had them, showed only a remarkable propensity for incessant chatter. Kael had bound them up with a silencing charm that she had renewed religiously over the journey. She handed them over with an air of almost vindictive pleasure, saying, "I don't envy your journey with those garrulous carcass-caps, should you fail to silence them."

Her charm expired right on cue, and the dwarven skull swiveled on its nonexistent neck to regard the stunned young emerald with a grin laden with the signs of senility. How a bare skull retained so much expression, Kael failed to fathom. "Now would ye mind terrible if-" he began.

"Kindly do _not_ give the dwarf any of that swill he calls mead," another voice chimed in. "However, should we be in more charitable talons than when last we saw the light of day, I would appreciate a goblet of elverquisst." This skull's words had the unmistakable lilt of an elven voice and, Kael thought, the snobbery of the entire isle of Evermeet's inhabitants combined.

Poor Jiriaewuthelaan looked so taken aback by the first two alcoholic skulls that he could hardly look more so when the human snorted dismissively (though how he did so through his fleshless sinus cavities, Kael never had figured out) and began disparaging the merits of both dwarven holy water and elverquisst, instead proceeding to spout the praises of a beverage, presumably alcoholic, of which neither dragon nor dragonborn had ever heard.

"I'd silence them quickly, were I you," Kael offered casually as she slid down her perch to land lightly on her feet. "Before they wake the gnome."

The smallest of the skulls stirred, and Jiriaewuthelaan looked at it in horror as the other skulls jerked its way in what Kael had learned to interpret as a glance, the human remarking, "About time you joined us, you pint-sized sluggard."

The dwarf leaped into the conversation, greeting it cheerfully as the elf chided the human skull for his lack of manners and what Jiriaewuthelaan assumed was the gnome skull took exception to the human's dour attitude and fired off a stinging retort. The dragon's eyes were wide enough that they might have leapt from his own skull as he proceeded to cast the quickest succession of silencing spells in his life.

Finally only the elf skull was left, steadily resisting the magical compulsion to be silent so that it could continue shouting, "Churl!" at the now-mute human skull.

Kael, laughing, silenced the elf skull for Jiriae. "Good luck with them," she saluted him, and left the shell-shocked dragon where he stood.

She was several paces away when he regained his senses enough to ask, "Where are you going?" "Hunting," Kael replied. "I'm hungry."

"I won't wait for you," Jiriaewuthelaan warned.

"And I won't overburden you on your journey. Fly swiftly; I have no intention of reaching home before you and the Gems do." Kael saw Jiriae open his jaws to continue his half-hearted argument, and she stopped him with a raised hand. "You have no desire to play the beast of burden, and I have no desire to compel you to. Shall we forego the token arguments and part ways?"

A toothy smile stretched across the emerald's face, and he nodded his agreement, dipping his wings in salute before gripping the bag of holding containing all of the Gems once more and launching into the air. He nearly fell back to the ground, he had so overbalanced in his desire to flaunt his power of flight, and he righted himself with Kael's teasing laughter ringing in his ears as he labored away, the scales of his ears glowing rather brighter than before. He flew swiftly indeed, and was soon a bright flash of wings in the distance, and then was gone.

Kael blew out a sigh of relief. "Good riddance," she said to the empty mountainside. Still, her silver-blue eyes remained fixed on the patch of sky where Jiriae had disappeared while she prayed to Sardior and any friendly deity that might be listening that he succeed in returning the Gems to the hidden isle of the Raszkethemiorlei dragons.

With that done, she extended her consciousness in a search for anything carrying enough meat to satisfy her. Her metabolism ran slow, more akin to a dragon's than an elf's, but considering that she hadn't eaten in roughly three tendays, she was holding out for something roughly wolf-sized. That, or she'd go back and see how quickly the human traveled- not that it mattered; once a dragon had begun a hunt, not even death could reliably stop it, and in that, Kael was fully dragon.


	3. A Storm of Impossibilities

Chapter Two: A Storm of Impossibilities

Dusk was wearing on, Kael knew, but that did not prepare her for the suddenness at which light fled the world in the mountains. A threatening rumble reverberated through the sky overhead and the temperature dropped as abruptly as the ominous black clouds had spread over the sky. Kael only had time to turn her scowl up to the growling sky, an answering growl rumbling in her throat, before the heavens opened on her, obliterating the scent she had been following and with it, all desire to hunt.

She was soaked as thoroughly as if some capricious nature deity had dumped the better portion of a lake on her, as well as all but blind and deaf. The rainwater beaded off of the armor Dartathleciele had crafted for her- he had succeeded in waterproofing shed dragon scales, it seemed- but everything besides her leather jerkin clung to her unpleasantly as her hair channeled water into her eyes and down the back of her neck. The dragonborn cringed under the onslaught, her continuing growl expressing her opinion of the icy downpour as she strained to peer through the curtains of rain for shelter.

She stumbled a few steps forward, buffeted by another rain-laden wind, and dropped to her knees, hugging the sodden mountainside to avoid the brunt of the blast. Beneath her, the loose mix of gravel and dirt shifted, small rocks rolled down past her, and so close to the ground, Kael clearly heard the groaning of larger rocks above her, their great weight protesting the instability.

_Someone up there hates me,_ Kael thought, blinking malevolently at the growling, boiling sky as she rose to her feet. She suppressed a shiver and moved with more caution, taking care that her steps did not provide the trigger for a mudslide. _It's not enough to be wet and miserable; I must also take care not to tickle the flesh of this sopping mountain, lest it shrug me off. _She shook her head, as much in frustration as to clear her eyes of the rainwater running into them.

"I hope Jiriae is caught in this," Kael mumbled. The next roll of thunder swallowed her words, and it was followed by a series of lightning flashes and thunder rolls such that Kael had never seen, even during the great hurricanes that swept through the pocket-plane of Raszkethemiorl.

Though Kael was temporarily deafened by the barrage, the sporadic light did at least reveal an opening in the steep face of the mountain that her rain-blurred vision would otherwise have missed. The saturated dragonborn picked her way towards it, realizing when she got near that this was better than what she had discerned in the weirdly flickering light- a true cave yawned at her.

Hardly worried about ousting any potential occupants, Kael squelched inside. Finally able to switch fully to darkvision, Kael scanned with her eyes and mind for any life besides herself. Nothing caught her eyes save for what might be a tunnel or merely a deep gash in the back of the cave- it was too small for even a kobold to step through, anyway- and nothing brushed her mind save for the minds of a den of wolves at the limits of her range, also sheltering from the storm and no threat to her in any case.

She dropped her cloak from her shoulders and proceeded to strip out of her dripping clothes. Stepping away from the puddle she'd shed, Kael tapped her inner fire once more and dried herself in one controlled burst, sending steam to hover about her in the chilled air. Luxuriating in the heat, Kael wrung out her clothes and then gave them the same treatment, flash-drying them and clothing herself again, her movements weighted with the fatigue of her play with the human boy and her labored journey up the storm-lashed mountain. Outside the cave, the storm continued to rage, but Kael heard none of it, passing into sleep curled with her cloak balled under her head and the heat of her inner well of fire glowing in her skin, beating back the chill of the stone.

It was a scene that changed very little as the storm blew out its explosive fury and retreated, unnoticed by the deeply slumbering dragonborn. Unnoticed, like the breach of her cave, as the tunnel too small to allow a kobold passage proceeded to spew out a caravan of drow.

The alarms sounding in Kael's mind got through too late for her to attack or flee, but just in time for her to appreciate how perfectly the drow group organized around her, cutting her off from any hope of escape, or even a full range of movement that didn't end in a magically sharpened blade. The precise arrangement of hunting dark elves held all of the controlled violence of an offended elder dragon, neither settled on dealing death nor averse to the idea. Now, as then, Kael acknowledged the threat with only bared teeth, too disoriented still from her sudden waking to do more but knowing better than to cower. _To show weakness is to ask for death._

Unimpressed, one of the drow standing behind the initial ring of fighters snapped out a command, and in response Kael heard a click. A short dart whizzed towards her and was sent spinning away with a thought and a burst of psionic energy. Kael tapped more of her reserves, ignoring the elf approaching with another dart held like a dagger as she willed the energies of her mind, the only weapon she trusted to move quicker than the razor-keen blades ringing her, into a towering mass, a thing to crush. In an instant she divided her focus, sustaining the barest contact with the dark elves between her and the cave mouth to give direction to her budding assault, releasing it like relaxing a clenched fist.

Confident in her psionic ability, which was counted strong among the dragons of her age, Kael was completely unprepared for the sextet force of her own attack rebounding on her, rushing into the defenses she had long since ingrained into her psyche in the event of an attack and overwhelming them, leaving her stunned, eyes unfocused and unblinking as they stared up at the water-ridged stone of the ceiling.

She did not move for several moments, unaware of the multiple amused, speculative gazes resting on her. Kael was briefly stranded in an inner world whose very fabric was wavering under the blow it had sustained, deep violet-red thought rippling in agonized currents as she cast out her focus, drawing herself together with mental cords of will. One word echoed through her psyche as she swam up through the tides of wavering thought and throbbing aftershocks towards consciousness, catching the dreamlike quivering of her semi-conscious state and modulating it into nightmarish howls, haunting, fluting cries, and sweetly mocking, musical laughter as it reverberated through her mind: _impossible._

The leader of the caravan cocked his head as he surveyed the fallen surface dweller, the mannerism catching the eyes of the drow surrounding her. Evidently satisfied, he nodded and gestured, his fingers directing them to secure her and the cave while they waited for her to regain consciousness.

Pleased, Barnozz crossed his arms and eyed the captive. There was no point in returning just yet, if there was a chance of more easy captures like that. Why settle for one psion- an exotic from the World Above, no less- when an entire family might be lurking somewhere, just waiting for an enterprising slaver to profit off of them? The surface dweller stirred, and the avaricious gleam in his carmine eyes took on a new eagerness as their wizard stepped forward to interrogate the captive.

_Impossible_, came the thought ringing unbidden through Jiriaewuthelaan's head, a note of utter disbelief ringing a death knell for the sight before him. Despite it all, the view remained unchanged, neatly ruling out the possibility that he had been flying too long and was hallucinating shapes into the clouds. Ignoring Jiriae's disbelieving stare, the white dragon continued to uncurl itself from the ice-capped peak it had been hugging as it enjoyed the effect of the sunlight refracting in its scales and the surrounding snow.

There were no dragons in this mountain range, Jiriaewuthelaan knew. Dartathleciele had made him learn all of the prominent lairs in Faerûn and the islands of the western coast before he left, and this range was clearly uninhabited. Jiriae had also not heard of any conflicts large enough to lead a fully mature ice dragon to abandon its lair, which should have been somewhere in the Spine or some other, greater range, for a lair in this piddling little mountain range. It was absurd- and yet, the coldly gleaming female was airborne and approaching him. Hastily, Jiriae opened his jaws, intending to call out to her in her own language to negotiate safe passage through her demesne.

Either mistaking his motion for an intended attack or not caring to hear his words, the female opened her mouth in return, and exhaled. Jiriaewuthelaan's heart plummeted even faster than his body, his wings now heavy with a rime of iron-hard ice. Ice crackled as his chest expanded infinitesimally to draw breath, the harsh cold burning his lungs as he inhaled. He had no concern about dropping the Gems that Kael had retrieved, at least- his talons were frozen around them. Both a fleeting instant and a yawning eternity later, his ice-locked body plummeted into the mountain peak, skidding across the frozen stone and snow before coming to rest on a more level section some yards from the peak.

Jiriae could feel the heat leaking from him as he lay prone, frozen in body and numb in thought. If any warmth had been considering lingering in his vicinity, it hastily reconsidered as the white dragon's head came into view, her eyes reflecting icy serenity back at him as their color drank him in. Jiriae felt his consciousness leaving him under the gaze of those utterly neutral eyes, eyes the color of the dark ice that has swallowed the deep green of the seawater in the frozen North. One of the last sensations he was aware of was that of the bag clutched in his talons being removed from his grip.

As the sight darkened in Jiraewuthelaan's brilliant eyes, he dimly thought of the other way in which his kindred determined rank, his drifting mind seizing upon the earlier thought as he realized his failure in the task he was set. Aside from claiming status with a combination of clever maneuvering and gall, there was the route of sheer, terrifying force. Dartathleciele, their eldest, was a dragon of an age when this was the primary way of attaining stature, and held rigidly to the old ways. So it was with an almost relieved sigh that his head turned and lolled, lifeless, against the ground. At least this way he wouldn't have to face the ire of their most terrifying leader.

The ice dragon turned her considering gaze from the pouch she had pulled from the youngling's claws to the youngling himself, snorting in quiet contempt as he drooped into the snow. She could feel magic breathing from the bag he carried, magic she had no intention of unveiling up on the mountain peak, where the rowdy winds jostled and fought to carry whatever they might overhear to as many ears as would listen. She looped the bag's strap over one talon and, after a moment of looking speculatively at the young emerald dragon, scooped him up in the other claw. The male wouldn't provide a worthy source of nourishment unless her need was dire, but the glimmer of his scales held possibilities for decorating her lair.


	4. Enter: The Daukreszith Qenulsarya

**Disclaimer: **Anything contained herein which is the licensed property of Wizards of the Coast is being borrowed without permission, but with every intention of returning said content when I am finished playing with it. No profit is being made from this, save for my own personal amusement. All other content is mine, and any attempt to steal it will be corrected by Dartathleciele. You don't want to make him angry.

_Enter: The Daukreszith Qenulsarya_

Irae, the caravan's wizard, ran her nimble fingers idly down one of her many slender braids as she watched their newest acquisition stir, her learned eyes catching things that she knew her compatriots missed. The aura around her, the visible emanation of the Art within her, bore the typical unruly signature of one born to magic rather than a student of the Art like herself. Also- Irae smirked to herself as she observed it- _faerzress_ clung to the edges of her aura like lint, determinedly waiting to put snarls in any spell she sought to weave. Still, that did nothing to explain why her attempted assault had failed- it was clearly psionic power, not arcane. Even in the midst of her speculations, she didn't fail to notice Barnozz sidling casually up to her. "A psion," he remarked, commenting on the flutter of energy they had all felt with her attack. "House Oblodra may be interested in her for that reason alone." Irae smirked a bit at the lustful tone underlying his words even as a greedy gleam came into her own eyes.

"A psion who knocks herself senseless every time she attempts to attack? Certainly, why wouldn't a House of mind-mages want to eliminate such an embarrassment to their Art from existence?" Irae answered, still running her fingers thoughtfully along a braid as she watched the surface-dweller swim up from the depths of gave her a curious look. "You didn't do that?"

Irae sneered down at the elven figure on the floor, saying, "Her attack rebounded on her before I intervened." She paused a moment, deciding to offer a further bit of information. "I've never heard of such a thing- it isn't the cause of a simple lapse of focus."

The ardor in Barnozz's eyes cooled slightly as he reviewed this new information, stating, "But regardless, she is worthless." The finality of his tone caught Kael's attention, falling upon her ears just as the sounds of her surroundings began to register again. She turned her head to regard him through the red-gray haze tingeing the edges of her vision, but she only had so much attention that she could spare him; the majority of it was taken up with receiving delayed tactile information, the bulk of it informing her that being a few inches from the floor had not aided her skull in finding a soft patch of stone. The growing lump on her head was nothing to block out the agony inside it, preventing her from turning much of her attention to anything but the torturous headache she was nursing.

In response to whatever the male had said, the fighter standing at Kael's head brought his wave-edged sword down tight against Kael's throat, looking to his leader for confirmation, and drastically heightening Kael's attention to the events at hand. Kael could fill in the gaps left by her unconsciousness easily enough, and seethed within the ring of blades. A moment later, she felt a sharp sting and a ticklish trickle of warmth as the blade at her throat nicked her skin, drawing the eyes of the waiting soldier and the two leaders of the caravan.

The scent of blood made her stomach growl loudly, reminding her of the dinner that the storm had encouraged her to skip, and drawing chuckles from more than a few of the drow. That last casual toss of salt into the open wound of her pride finally brought the growing blaze of her temper to conflagration, echoed in the roaring swathe of flame that she willed into being, devouring the soldier who stood over her. Kael barely felt the sear of heated metal at her throat, so focused was she on the effort of feeding the flame with malice, sapping the greater part of what little strength she had recovered while she rested. A flash of some countering spell and a barrage of paralysis-poisoned darts put an end to her little tantrum, leaving Kael bleeding and wracked with the residual pain of her failed psionic attack. Panting with fury, she fought to focus as Barnozz towered in her blurred vision. The drow could have sworn that, despite being paralyzed, she managed to slump a bit in conjunction with the humiliation that filled her eyes; he smirked at the thought, and called to his wizard partner, "That attack would have succeeded, had Micaarina not been quick with her spell."

"That was not psionic power," Irae replied, her voice sour. "Not that I expect a male unversed in the arcane to notice such a thing."Barnozz took the insult with good grace, his humor restored by the confirmation that his capture was indeed saleable, and for a price that made his fingers tingle. "And could one versed in the arcane investigate her powers, that we may better set a minimum price?"

Irae rolled her eyes and strode towards Kael in the face of a truly impressive glare. Apparently she had recovered from her moment of doubt- that, or was heartily pretending that she had. However, Irae's practiced eyes could hardly help from noticing the rapid dilation and contraction of Kael's serpentine pupils (_not a faerie after all, then?_ _What are you?_) as her gaze slid in and out of focus. The wizard deliberately accentuated the flow of her wizardly garb, putting a sway in her step so that her robes rippled around her in a way that the surfacer clearly did not appreciate.

Color drained from Kael's face as the drunken staggering of the normally steady earth began to caper around the sickening swirl of the approaching drow's split robes. Kael could feel her last meal rise to the back of her throat, much to her displeasure, as she hadn't been thrilled to see it the first time around. She struggled, for the sake of dignity, against her rebellious gag reflex- and lost the battle, disgorging the contents of her stomach, not on herself, but pure spite empowering her to shift just enough so they landed at Irae's feet.

Irae recoiled in disgust, glaring at Kael and noting as she did the self-satisfied glint in her eye. Replaying the past few seconds, she realized why. Checking her mounting rage, she turned to her compatriots. "How strong was the poison on those darts?"

'Not strong enough' was the obvious answer, but none of them were foolish enough to give it. "It would be enough to keep a goblin down for three hours," one brave soul ventured.

Irae narrowed her eyes as she scoured her robes clean with a spell. "One of you, double the concentration." With that settled, Irae turned back to the captive who had dared to deliberately vomit on her, forcing her fingers to go smoothly through the gestures of a translation spell, despite the fact that she wanted nothing more than flay the impudent captive where she lay. "Can you speak?" she asked.

Kael looked up at the wizard and saw a bloody and painful death dancing in her eyes. She decided abruptly not to play dumb. "Yes," she slurred, her tongue still clumsy in her mouth.

"Then let me assure you before we begin that if you lie to me, you will repent in agony."

The utter certainty that a mere threat from this tender-skinned and likely tasty mammal would be sufficient to cow her made Kael's blood rush to boil in her face, banishing from her mind all previous thoughts of prudence. Such things were the due of greater dragons than herself, certainly- something that Zakkarsciolerevaiira araie Ysraelsavvrae reminded her of more from habit than an actual hope that it would instill proper manners in the bumptious youngling whose presence he pretended to so grudgingly bear. A part of her smiled reminiscently as she followed that train of thought into recollections of her many invasions into the touchy old sage's lair, and his endless scolding that somehow morphed into him imparting countless small wisdoms or bits of lore to the young dragonborn. Completely distanced from the events outside of herself, that distracted portion of Kael chuckled. She'd thought that old Zakkarsciolerevaiira was quite intimidating once, with his voice like the bitter winds of winter rattling through the last autumn leaves, and his wild rages at the slightest provocation. It had taken several more visits for her to discover that the elder was all roar and no rampage, as it were.

_Not like this little wizard, _she thought, the entirety of her attention returning to the female who stood before her, murderous intent simmering behind her eyes. Painfully, Kael swallowed the most suicidal aspect of her pride, the part demanding that she leave no portion of the enraged diatribe lurking behind her lips unspoken, and merely nodded. The flash in the dark elf's eyes immediately informed her that her answer was insufficient, and she forced out in what she approximated to be humility, "Understood." She was rather proud of herself for making it through her ordeal— surely no one could tell that she had spoken while fantasizing about gnawing off the wizard's skinny fingers. Surely."What are you, and are there any others of your kind nearby?" Irae studied Kael's face, still disconcertingly composed for someone who woke surrounded by a ring of dark elven slavers, and added, "Tell me, and at least you will not have to suffer alone."

That garnered Kael's attention immediately. A vindictive part of her briefly considered sending them after the human boy, whose fault it was that she was too tired to reduce the lot of them to piles of soot, but after a moment she decided that that looked too much like cooperation. Besides, the female had asked if any others of _her _kind were nearby, which Taren was most certainly not. "I traveled alone, and none of my kind lives near here." _And I should attempt to explain the Raszkethemiorl to them, tell them how essentially starved of anything worthwhile their world is in comparison, how paltry their magics and evanescent their peoples? I think not. Even the dragons of this plane forget their lore, and the eladrin waned into elves—_

The world spun around her, a maelstrom of sickening, confused impressions of a dark, pointed face grown even sharper with displeasure intermingled with purest agony kneading her every bone into jelly. The pain stopped for only a breath of time, long enough for the repeated question: "What are you?"

"_Vii dharastriiera_!" The words burst out of her just before Kael thought that she would liquefy herself, winning her another moment of freedom from the torture being wrecked upon her.

The wizard paused as her translation spell provided with the meaning of the foreign words that Kael had shrieked at her, disbelief making her check the spell to ensure it was still functioning correctly. _That _did _explain her combination of psionics and sorcery, _she admitted. _Gem dragons are known as psions, and draconic sorcerers are hardly a novel concept. However… _"Why are you—"

Irae's interrogation halted mid-breath as an ominous roar sounded outside the cave, her question mutating instantly into a whispered incantation. She turned, blue light gleaming at her ebon fingertips, only a heartbeat after the rest of the slavers had their various weapons readied. Barnozz motioned for one of the slavers to peek out of the cave. Cautiously, he did so, flat against the wall and poised to dodge back inside as he squinted uncomfortably in the moonlight shining through the now flawlessly clear sky, scanning the terrain. He relaxed marginally after a moment, and seconds later a drow-shaped mass of mud squelched in. Ignoring the scout at the mouth of the cave, he offered a terse explanation to his leader, striving valiantly to ignore the growing grins of his companions once they understood that they were not under attack.

A quiet chuckle went through the cave and the muddied drow scout turned, fire in his eyes. Barnozz looked from the mud elf to Kael, who, despite her pallor and the trembling of her limbs, was not even bothering to hide that she was the source of the laugh as the drow squelchily advanced on her. Barnozz prided himself on procuring manageable slaves, and so watched with interest as Kael turned a bland look on the approaching drow, seeming wholly unimpressed in the face of his rage. She also did nothing more to provoke him, seemingly satisfied with expressing her schadenfreude and disinclined to irritate him further.

Satisfied for the moment that their catch lacked a death wish strong enough to make her unsalable, Barnozz turned his eye on Ranaste, who showed no such signs of restraint. He spoke up, his smiling tone halting Ranaste in his tracks. "You aren't going to damage valuable merchandise before we've even left the surface, are you?"

The air went thick with tension, Barnozz watching the scout's back knot with frustration and Kael sitting just as still, her pale eyes now vividly marked with dark circles watching Ranaste and watching him watching them. The moment of stifling tension passed, Ranaste looking nonchalantly over his shoulder and with venom still in his eyes asking, "Later?"

Feeling Kael's eyes still on him, Barnozz inclined his head, giving him permission and giving Kael one more thing to mull over as she was prodded to her feet and lead to the back of the cave.

She felt a twist in the Weave as Irae drew a roughly gnome-sized skull from her robes and began chanting. Kael inhaled surreptitiously, drawing in the heavy scent of Earth as Irae's manipulations wakened it, bidding it to enlarge the tunnel and give them entry into the caverns beyond. The fact that there was a cavern somewhere behind this cave, Kael was sure of- the glimpse of yawning space she caught from the waking element was sufficient for that- but she felt that brief window of insight close to her with the finality of a door snapping shut. Kael made a disgruntled face and contented herself to watch the path open through mundane means; it was not for dragons of Air and Fire to eavesdrop on the workings of Earth, and she hadn't the power to persuade it otherwise. Finally, the tunnel was open, and the caravan disappeared into it. A breath of time later, and it was like the encounter in the cave had never been.

* * *

Jiriaewuthelaan was nursing a headache to rival Kael's as he wavered uncertainly into consciousness, divided on whether it was better to risk being eaten or endure the aftereffects of his near-death experience. He opened his eyes the smallest fraction possible, and the lancing pain from that small motion and the influx of light abruptly decided him in favor of unconsciousness and potentially being eaten. Therefore, the realization that he had passed that delicate threshold at which he could choose to fade quietly back into oblivion was understandably greeted with a viscera-deep groan of despair. Even the near-silent brush of frost-white scales against the chilled stone grated mercilessly against his skull, as if each wave of sound was preceded by a steel rasp designed specifically to torture him into madness.

_Brush of scales on stone…?_

The identification of the most recent sound external to himself belatedly replayed through Jiriae's head, now coupled with its significance. _She's here. So where are the Gems? She's moving. Towards me? _

The soft susurrus of the female's movement had stopped, and Jiriae's head was pounding too loudly for him to listen for her breathing, especially with the winds outside screaming as they were. The sound filled Jiriae with a sense of longing as he briefly fantasized about hurling himself into their warring currents. From there, calling on his birthright, guiding them to fill his wings and rushing himself away faster than she could ever dream of flying would be the work of a moment.

_Your wings are frozen, your treasure stolen, and she's probably debating on whether or not you're worth eating as you daydream. _Even Jiriaewuthelaan's typically caustic inner voice fell silent as they realized together the import of what he had done: vocalized the fact that he was victim of the gravest crime of dragonkind.

_Treasure stolen._ My _treasure._ Jiriae's eyes snapped open, sparking with fury as he met the gaze of the ice dragon, too incensed to be drawn into her stare or, for the moment, intimidated. The fact that it was only in his possession for the duration of the trip was immaterial. During that time span the Gems were _his, _right up until he gave them to Dartathleciele, at which point they would be his lord's.

"Where is my hoard?" he snarled at her, barely noticing and not caring in the slightest that he was speaking the common draconic language rather than the tongue native to his plane. The fact that she could understand his words was irrelevant- any dragon would understand him just then, waking robbed. Were he not so young, a fight to the death followed by an optional razing of the nearby countryside to make an example would be in order. Since he was just growing into his innate magics, honor simply demanded that he not take the insult lying down- metaphorically, at least. The fact that he was completely unable to free himself also made the actuality of his prone position a moot point, not that that made his helplessness grate any less against his sensibilities.

She gave him an utterly unconcerned look, one that pointedly lingered on the ice cementing his wings to the floor to either side of him. It seemed that she disdained to actually speak to him.

"This will hold me," he snapped back, acid flying in tiny, hissing droplets with his words, "but you don't have enough breath in your whole body to hold Dartathleciele, and you can be certain that he knows I'm here." Ordinarily Jiriae would have been humiliated to have to threaten retribution from another on his behalf, but this was a special situation by all accounts. It wasn't every day that he got to enjoy the fact that the mere mention of his Daukreszith Qenulsarya, his lord and the high priest of the Raszkethemiorlei, was enough to send the lesser dragons shaking.

The dragoness gave him a stare more languid than all of the past ones in an attempt to make up for showing the momentary pause Dartathleciele gave her. The attempt curled Jiriae's mouth into a grin so derisive that his pointed molars were clearly visible in his delight.

_Upon reflection, I should have known better_, Jiriae thought as the female inhaled sharply, the world slowing so he could watch the ice rime her teeth as she prepared another breath weapon attack. His next move was born of pure desperation. He reached out to the wind scourging the frozen earth outside the cave, invoking the still-uncertain magic in his blood to send it howling down the throat of the cave, catching the ice dragon and buffeting her to one side. She skidded several yards along the floor, and Jiriae used the time to wrench at the ice encasing his wings, knowing full well that his acid breath would only freeze to the ice. The wind still howled hungrily through the cave, and in the periphery of Jiriae's attention he could feel it inspecting the cave with all of the brash curiosity of a hatchling, learning the shape of a place where the air had been stagnant for time untold, rushing through it in an effort to reclaim it from the stolid influence of the earth.

The capriciousness of the elemental wind kept Jiriae distracted as he tried to redirect its attention to the ice dragon rising from the floor with murder in her strikingly deep eyes. It wasn't interested- it already knew the dragoness, had held her on its back as she soared through the frozen heights, and had even known her when she was still in the other mountains, mountains that now carried the scent of blood and smoke and something Jiriae didn't recognize as the wind chattered to him, blissfully unconcerned about his impending demise. He steeled himself and summoned his will as the dragoness inhaled again, dragging at the recalcitrant mountain air with one portion of his attention as he sent a jumble of confusing impressions at the dragoness. The results of his efforts were a dubious success- the female shook her head twice to clear it, right as the air in the cave went still.

'Calm before the storm' utterly failed to describe the fury of the entrance that followed- all of it completely gratuitous, since Jiriaewuthelaan knew perfectly well that the wind would let Dartathleciele pass through it without so much as a whisper, welcoming him into its evanescent embrace as one of its own. The wind howled once more down the throat of the cave, making it swallow screams that had echoed off the mountainsides and been lost in the play of the winds for centuries past, the sounds so old that even the ghosts of the land no longer remembered them, those who had long since wearied of walking the passes where they died and dissipated into an uneasy rest. The sound was bone-chilling, the blades of the twisting currents ice-edged, but still the atmosphere carried a breath of heat, the merest threat of the rage of the dragon who now stood outside. It was enough; the ice dragon's pupils had nearly swallowed her captivating irises, and she had retreated, clearly without even realizing it, to the far side of the cave, the primal mandate to get away from the livid enemy outside overruling even her sense of dignity.

The cave was too small for the elder dragon; he removed the ceiling obstructing his way with chilling nonchalance, making it clear that he thought nothing of opening the cave to the sky with the casual application of the energies stored in his ancient mind. A flick of his wing directed the wind that eddied around him like a fawning puppy to blow away the dust and debris, and then even the illusion of shelter that the cave provided was stripped away. The female, covered in the dust that was all that remained of her ceiling, summoned what had to be all of her courage and, in a movement that Jiriaewuthelaan privately thought nothing short of heroically audacious, met Dartathleciele's eyes.

His eyes- the eyes of the mightiest of the Raszkethemiorlei in the midst of his rage, were a sight to behold. Opalescent fire sparked in the vast orbs that she, Israzorentyrr'na, felt traveling into her own eyes and tracing lines of caustic flame into her own brain. Still she was unable to look away, captivated by the colorless rainbows that shimmered with the scintillating, freezing heat of his ire. If the purest elemental ice glowed with the core of heat which gave the Plane of Fire life, it would look like his eyes. The breath froze in her lungs, and she was paralyzed at once with awe and terror- never, in all of the lore she had ever heard, had a dragon captured another dragon with its gaze. If Dartathleciele knew that (and Israzorentyrr'na couldn't imagine something that the Daukreszith Qenulsarya wouldn't know), knew that it was impossible, it seemed that he didn't care- he seemed to have simply decreed that for him, it was possible, and acted on that supreme faith in himself. Israzorentyrr'na had seen dragons less secure in their own lairs than he was in hers, supremely certain that he owned whatever patch of land he happened to be standing on, all of the area around it, and the air that they happened to be breathing, as well. It was his, all of it.

And so it surprised her not at all when he finally, after achingly long eons of breathless seconds, spoke, and his first words were, "You have something of mine, vrak."

_Child._ Even that condescending address failed to overwhelm her awe of Dartathleciele, the greatest of the dragons who chose life in Raszkethemiorl, their obscure demiplane of living elements and half-closed doors across the multiverse (or so it was whispered, by those too foolish to realize that the wind caught every whisper, and sooner or later, brought them to the ears of the Daukreszith Qenulsarya). The purity of his might burned at Israzorentyrr'na, a pain that she would disregard for the present in order to give him the reply that his menacing silence demanded. "I make no claim on your subordinate, Daukreszith Qenulsarya," she answered, icy serenity coating her voice even in the midst of her dread. "I have no desire to dispute his ownership with you. Having overcome him myself, however, by our own laws the treasure he carried is mine."

Dartathleciele's eyes widened, and Israzorentyrr'na waited for his reaction with the patience that only her kind could muster in the face of almost certain death. Her shock was complete when he nodded his acknowledgement, sparing a scathing glance towards the emerald youth that lay crumpled on her floor. He wilted instantly, all relief at having been overlooked in this confrontation evaporated in the face of his lord's scorn. The sight caused Israzorentyrr'na no small amount of satisfaction, knowing beyond doubt that before that moment he had been savoring her dismay as intensely as she was now savoring his. It made her all the more curious, however, as to what he had been carrying on his flight through her mountains. _It really was a pity that she had no idea what treasure she had just risked death for_.

"It really is a pity that you have no idea what treasure you just risked death for, on the gamble that I am a dragon with respect for our laws," Dartathleciele remarked, his resonant voice dry enough to spark fire from his scales.

Israzorentyrr'na stared hard at him, her eyes of frozen oceans succeeding in matching the quicksilver brilliance of Dartathleciele's gaze for an instant as she silently emanated resentment. _Psions. _The Daukreszith Qenulsarya spared an instant to give her a patronizing smirk, informing her that he had heard that thought as well, and then turned his attention to the emerald dragon who, although his wings had been freed by the fury of Dartathleciele's entrance, had thought better of calling attention to himself by rising.

Just at that moment, Israzorentyrr'na would have bet her entire hoard, the mysterious new treasure included, that he was also thinking better of existing. She smirked, a bitter edge to her expression that reflected the envy that witnessing the Raszkethemiorlei's power had sparked in her, though she would not realize that was the pain worming its way into her until they had left. _It was only right_, she thought, _that the youngling who started all of this should be reprimanded._ Apparently that portion of his humiliation was not for her to see, however, for Dartathleciele merely pinned Jiriawuthelaan to the ground with his gaze for a moment before curtly opening a door in the wind.

Pure magic rushed out of the portal, provoking an involuntary tremor in Israzorentyrr'na as she looked on, her blood temporarily dancing in her veins as she breathed deeply of the air of another plane, another involuntary reaction to being exposed to the purest essence of draconic magic. Jiriaewuthelaan meekly stepped through, followed by Dartathleciele, the portal opening to his massive frame with the air of arms welcoming longed-for kin back home. The winds reformed immediately, going back to their natural paths without the presence of the dragon who held their essence in his blood to draw them to him. Without his towering presence and the ostentatious force of his power, Israzorentyrr'na felt that her cave was oddly empty, depressingly lacking in magic. Never mind that the ice atop these peaks had been here since these mountains were formed, their ancient, merciless chill as full of elemental power as any place in Toril- after the assault of raw magic that was in the very air of Raszkethemiorl, the world felt bland, its magics paltry. It enraged Israzorentyrr'na, so she turned her mind back to Jiriaewuthelaan and his timid return to his home, seeking satisfaction from his humiliation to overcome her sudden feeling of poverty.

It was only right, she thought again, now that the wreckage of her cave and the air she breathed were hers again. _As right as things can be, _a voice deeper inside her whispered, _when that level of power and beauty is denied you for having been born to a poorer bloodline native to a magicless world._ Such was the effect that the Raszkethemiorlei had on even the dragons of Abeir-Toril, perhaps especially on the dragons. Who but another of their kind could truly appreciate the magic that was the birthright of the Raszkethemiorlei, a bloodline so steeped in the elemental lore of their plane that they commanded true sorcery rather than just the innate abilities of dragonkind, and that the magic in their blood sang to them so loudly that other dragons could hear the siren call of it and perish of envy, knowing that such transcendence was forever beyond them?

Israzorentyrr'na heaved a deep sigh, the chill of it freezing a small circle on her floor as she stared vacantly ahead, listening to the wind sing in her ears that not long ago roared with the presence of Dartathleciele. She had heard of the mortals of this realm becoming elf-struck, long ago, when the elves were more the wild, fey creatures from their faerie plane that they once were than the mundane morsels that they were becoming. Seeing them back then, the mortals would be forever ensnared by their sharp beauty and the eternity of mysteries that their magic promised, an aura of haunting, heartrending longing about them that drove the mortals who encountered them on those rare, moonlit nights that their planes would cross borders utterly mad. Those who survived mostly intact still never forgot what they saw, she reminisced, her eyes focused on some unknown patch in the distance, a part of them forever entranced with the knowledge of what they had seen and could never attain, knowing that holding onto such a thing a hopeless task even as they clung desperately to the memory.

There were those that theorized that the dragons were also not native to Abeir-Toril, but had migrated there from another place. Israzorentyrr'na's haunting eyes narrowed with wrath, reflecting on the possibilities unstated but explicitly offered by that hypothesis. _I should eat whoever came up with that idea, _she snarled to herself. Even as she thought such a thing, however, she knew that she was acknowledging the truth. She was as struck by the Daukreszith Qenulsarya as any mortal by the ancient fey, and even as she hated the idea, she replayed the sensation of her cave being alive with deep elemental magic as she fell asleep, the wind singing with his memory in her ears.

* * *

**A/N:** I apologize for the wait, everyone. Second semester has seemingly been intent upon burying me in masses of assignments, and it is only thanks to Spring Break that I've managed to get this posted. The next chapter, however, will mark a return to the usual two weeks/one month range posting schedule. As always, any comments, suggestions and/or constructive criticism is welcome!


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